Highly-acclaimed photographer and director Renell Medrano has the uncanny ability to document the everyday and reframe it to make it spectacular. Her work often leans to being biographical: always returning to documenting people and places of particularly personal significance to her. Now, in collaboration with WeTransfer she presents “LAMBÓN”, an exhibition in New York that acts as a retrospective of her work, but also a launchpad for her first magazine, “ICE.” Here writer Darian Symoné Harvin speaks to Medrano about the themes she keeps returning to, and the new strings to her creative bow.
You can find photographer and director Renell Medrano in a space between intention and the unexpected. She captures people in places where they tend to let their guard down: the bedroom, living rooms, the hair salon. Her decision to work with analog photography complements the intimacy of the vulnerable spaces she’s drawn to. You see this on full display in PAMPARA, Medrano’s first collaboration with WePresent back in 2020, in which she returned to the Dominican Republic for the first time since her teens to revisit the culture and people who shaped her world and create portraits of members of the local community.
Now Medrano has joined forces with WeTransfer once again, this time to create a new exhibition, “LAMBÓN”. In the show, whose name translates in Dominican slang for “suck-up” or a “leech,” Medrano pushes further, asking what it means to create work that is personal and powerful, deeply rooted in culture yet expansive enough to shift it. The exhibition is a collection of images from editorial and creative collaborations through Ice Studios, and some taken during personal trips to the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Egypt. “It's all a celebration for the girls like me,” Medrano says, “the kids like me, the people like me.”
Photographing some of today’s leading voices and artists such as Kendrick Lamar, Solange, and Serena and Venus Williams, Medrano has managed to challenge the polished, controlled imagery we’re fed in the media and the sometimes myopic nature of the world of fashion editorial. In “LAMBÓN”, you’ll see a photo of Lamar cradling a baby. The image is split down the middle. "That was a mistake. And to me, I love it. I embrace the mistake," she says. Whether it’s a light leak or an underexposed film photo, Medrano is more driven by the thrill of an unpredictable outcome than the fear of it.
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“It’s all a celebration for the girls like me, the kids like me, the people like me.”
Also in LAMBÓN is Medrano’s 2019 film “PELUCA” (which translates to “wig” in Spanish). In this film, Medrano explores the rising significance of wigs in pop culture over the years, all while drawing from her experiences growing up in the Bronx. While documenting subjects in familiar surroundings she also transforms them by amplifying their aesthetic choices— hair, wigs, and nails—using these details to build visual narratives about beauty and identity. She works with what’s already there, capturing its essence while simultaneously elevating it. Elsewhere in LAMBÓN, is a selection of photographs from a time when Medrano, along with fire designer Ricky Braukus and stylist Marika-Ella Ames, traveled to Jamaica. “I’m a Caribbean girl. Being Dominican, I’m always curious and eager to learn about different cultures,” she says. “Jamaica has a culture I can relate to and wanted to explore. Plus, my stylist, Marika, is Jamaican.” While there, Medrano cast local strippers for a specific vision she had in mind. In one striking shot, a Jamaican woman lounges calmly as a fire blazes beside her.
Toward the end of the show’s run, Medrano will launch her first magazine, ICE, titled with a nod to her creative studio (founded in 2021 alongside talent manager Jess Moloney) of the same name. For Medrano, Ice Studios have become the place in which Medrano can experiment, and has pushed her forward as a filmmaker, businesswoman, and designer. Back in 2021, she started by creating her own items of clothing; T-shirts, skull caps, and cargo-style nylon skirts with drawstrings for the wearer to adjust as they see fit. “Whenever I had an event [to go to], I’d end up making my own pieces,” Medrano explains. “It just intertwined with me making clothes and being able to shoot whatever I wanted. That’s really it—being able to bring the girls I grew up watching into my world and developing that story within the clothes.”
The experimentation Medrano has undertaken through ICE Studios was the catalyst for her starting her own publication. Back in summer 2024, women of every height and size answered a casting call Medrano posted on Instagram. “Maybe 50 girls will show up,” Medrano thought. Instead, more than 500 arrived. She decided this would be the casting for ICE, a magazine concept she’d had in mind for the past few years. Visually, Medrano’s inspiration for ICE comes from Players magazine, a 1970s softcore publication known for blending sensuality, Black culture, and intellect. Yet, while Players catered to the male gaze, Medrano wanted to create a space for women to see themselves. “Players was for men, but I want to bring it into my world, where it’s not just for men,” she explains. “It’s for a community of women, a place where we can be comfortable.”
The features in ICE magazine were brought to life by an all-women crew; Medrano behind the lens, with Nikki Nelms on hair, Raisa Flowers on makeup, and Marika-Ella Ames on styling. “In this industry, I’m always shooting faces we’re already familiar with,” Medrano explains. “I grew up obsessed with the video vixens, curvy girls like my mom and aunts. This is my world. That’s what I consider an Ice Girl.”
Your individuality is the thing that sets you apart, and that is your key to unlock your door.
The magazine portrays the “Ice Girl” in a way that still leaves her up for interpretation, and that’s by design. The foundation of an Ice Girl is motivated by the women Medrano grew up around and those she was drawn to in pop culture. Artists like Eve or Kelis serve as aesthetic inspiration, but their inclination toward individuality and showing up as their full selves, no matter their surroundings, was key. “Being an Ice Girl, it's an attitude rather than what you look like," Medrano says. Within the magazine, Nelms declares there is no set formula to being an Ice Girl. “Your individuality is the thing that sets you apart, and that is your key to unlock your door. You can’t take any shortcuts to figure out what your aesthetic is.”
Each woman cast was styled to step into a character and make it her own. Quotes that live next to each photograph reveal women who are ready to raise the stakes. “This whole situation is not even about what I want to do,” Medrano says of the ICE shoot. “For girls like me to feel comfortable, be seen, feel sexy, and just be natural and raw… that’s the important part.”
The exhibition and magazine and subsequently the alignment of these two moments, feel like Ice Studios come to life; an ethos realized. Medrano is inviting people into her world, while championing those already in it—showing that the human spirit and individuality she’s drawn to has always existed.
Renell Medrano and WeTransfer have collaborated on the inaugural issue of ICE Magazine, available to buy and donwload exclusively from WeTransfer from October 24th.